From left, Carole and Bruce Lunde, of Malta, listen as Carol Howard, RN charge nurse at Saratoga Hospital, conducts a tour of the new emergency department Sunday afternoon.
(ERICA MILLER/For The Saratogian)

SARATOGA SPRINGS -- Patient beds lining cramped hallways. Nurses shouting to each other from room to room. A hectic atmosphere.

Starting at 4 a.m. Wednesday, these situations will be a thing of the past in the emergency department at Saratoga Hospital, officials said Sunday at an open house event to show off the long-awaited new facility.

The $30 million emergency department on Myrtle Avenue will officially open this week, providing health professionals with state-of-the-art equipment and expanded working space, while patients can expect a private, calm experience.

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The new facility occupies the entire first floor of the two-story, 60,000-square-foot structure. With 42 private patient rooms, including four trauma rooms, four isolation rooms and a forensic room for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, it more than triples the capacity of the old facility, from 18,000 to 60,000 patients per year.

Each room features a computer, a flat-screen television, a medication dispenser and noise-blocking sliding glass doors covered by curtains. A seating area for family members is on one side of the bed, while a provider area with a desk and supplies is on the other.

"Everything is at (health care providers') fingertips," ER Director Dawn Parker said. "It cuts down on losing any valuable time because everything can be done at the bedside."

The old facility has 28 patient beds -- 14 of them curtained off in the hallways -- and is designed to handle 18,000 patients annually, but actually serves 35,000, Parker said. It has been in use as the hospital's emergency department since 1984 and was last renovated in 1992.

"It's a little different," Parker said wryly of the sprawling new ER. "That's what happens when you have a county growing this fast."

A family crisis room is a new addition where families can gather in private to grieve, talk with doctors or make phone calls in the event of a fatality.

"It's something we've been in dire need of and haven't had," Parker said.

The new ER is also equipped to handle severe cases such as exposure to toxic substances or a pandemic outbreak with airflow controlled rooms and a decontamination shower.

Original artwork by Capital Region artists hang on the walls, and terra cotta, sage and lavender paint colors of the interior promote a therapeutic atmosphere.

One feature hospital staff are particularly looking forward to is the new communications system, charge nurse Carol Howard said.

The system requires each nurse to wear a mobile phone device that patients can place calls to from their beds. The phones can be tracked from a central monitoring system, allowing head nurses like Howard to more efficiently dispatch nurses throughout the ER in the case that a patient needs urgent attention. The system will also cut down on back-and-forth trips to deliver medicine and other patient needs.

"Even though it's big and spread out, we can still monitor what's going on with any given patient at any given time," Howard said.

Saratoga Hospital president and CEO Angelo Calbone said the second floor of the new structure would be used as storage space until population growth and/or an expansion of the hospital's services and programs creates a demand for specific facilities.

"We haven't determined what's going in there yet," Calbone said. "As we look out over several years, it's likely that as our patient numbers grow, we can re-evaluate that space for additional patients," he said.